Pennsylvania

Where they are right now in terms of pre-war boundaries, Ellen isn't sure. Tunneltown's long since fallen into the distance. There's been pre-war highway to follow in some places, and only the scent trail of a group of people big enough that they have to be slavers in others, and the occasional confirmation in the form of ashes and trash heaps and latrine pits that some large group passed this way recently. There've been things coming at them out of the landscape in places, like mole rats but smaller and more numerous and vicious, and the occasional ghastly-looking bird that circles remarkably low overhead before changing its mind and moving on. There've been ridiculously massive giant ants. Once, they found the body of a woman in slave rags. There wasn't anything they could do for her except move her off the road and lay her straight for the final rites, and then move on.

Ellen is beginning to hate Paladin Renny and her orders, although she'll never admit it out loud.

"Hey, Voodoo?" she calls instead at one point, eyes on the scent trail as Dogmeat sniffs the night air around them. "It looks like they veered off the road here and headed for that bunch of houses up in the distance. I don't know if they're still there, but the trail's pretty fresh..."

And pre-war houses, back in the Capital Wastes, tended to attract raider groups like a corpse attracts bloatflies.